Category: Fun

For the times when you just want to get in the kitchen and get hands on.
Mince Pie Bread Snowflake

Mince Pie Bread Snowflake

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As you can see from the photo below, baking in a little student kitchen is more problematic than my little naive brain could have ever thought of. Before I got to uni I went on a full out shop, buying everything (within reason) I thought I would need to be ready to cook at uni. Oh boy was I wrong. Lacking in scales, space, ingredients and an oven big enough to actually fit the loaf of bread I made it was a wonder it came out looking like this and not a blob on a plate. I even resorted to using a golden syrup bottle to roll out my dough before realising I had a rolling pin after all (fyi, a bottle that has a curvy shape may be pretty but does not function as an effective rolling pin!).

Anyway, a bit of guessing with the measurements, some careful squishing onto the baking tray and 4 hours of time I probably should have spent studying later, this beauty appeared from the oven… and was then eaten in about 5 minutes. The two things I love most about baking is sharing the outcomes with others and, of course, the hands on process of making whatever it is. In particular there’s something very therapeutic about making bread and it’s a great way to calm yourself and get out your anger at the same time. I actually made this in the midst of the ‘I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, should I switch to an art degree or will I regret that in three years when I’m living in a cardboard box?!?’ crossroad in my life, and just getting the head space to actually think by doing something hands on was just what I needed at the time. I’m also 98% sure that mincemeat is a mood booster. Shove a jar of that under my nose and you’ll fool me into thinking it’s Christmas so I’ll perk up a lot!

One of the other fun things about making bread is the cool shapes you can twist the dough into! I first came across this way of shaping a loaf whilst watching Bake Off a few years ago. It’s so simple to do and yet messes with everyone’s head so they go ‘ooo, how’d you do that?’. It also makes the loaf really easy to share as each person can  rip off one of the snowflake branches!

Recipe

Serves about 8 hungry students

Time: 1 hour (plus proving and baking time)

Ingredients

For the Dough                   

  • 500g Strong white bread flour
  • 10g Salt
  • 25g Caster sugar
  • 10g Fast action dried yeast
  • 30g Butter
  • 2 Large eggs
  • 50ml Milk
  • Olive oil for greasing

For the Filling/Topping 

  • 350g Mince meat
  • 1 Egg to glaze
  • 150g Icing sugar

Method

  1. Begin by making the dough. Put the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a bowl and mix everything together. Make sure you don’t put the salt directly on top of the yeast or you could end up deactivating the yeast.
  2. Add the butter, eggs, milk and 100ml water to the mixture. Stir until combined, adding a little more water if needed to bring the dough together.
  3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes).
  4. Form the dough into a bowl and then put it into a large clean bowl. Cover with clingfilm and then set aside to prove for around an hour, until doubled in size.
  5. Turn the dough out onto a worktop and knead for 10-15 seconds to knock the air out. Then cut the dough in two, wrap one of the halves in clingfilm and set aside for later.
  6. Lightly flour a work top and roll the first half of the dough out into a circle, about 30cm in diameter. The dough will resist being stretched but keep going and you’ll get there. Transfer this sheet of dough to a lined baking tray.
  7. Spread the mincemeat over the circle of dough, leaving a 1 cm boarder around the edge.
  8. Roll out the remaining dough into another 30cm circle. Brush the edge of the base with a little water and then lift the top sheet of dough on to the base.
  9. Take a knife and carefully trim the circle so it’s neat (using a large bowl or plate as a guide can help). Then cut 16, 10cm long, equally spaced slices into the centre of the bread, but not cutting all the way into the middle. Using a 10cm wide template in the middle so you know where to cut to can help.
  10. Twist each strip over twice, the first one to the right, the second one to the left and so on, until you have 16 alternating twisted strips.
  11. Take two strips and gently squeeze together the tops of the strips to join them together. Repeat with the rest of your strips so you have 8 snowflake branches.
  12. Wrap the loaf loosely in cling film and then leave to prove for about 30 minutes.
  13. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Break an egg for glazing in a small bowl and beat with a fork to break it up.
  14. Brush the egg over the risen loaf to glaze and then bake for 20-25 minutes in the oven until golden-brown and risen. Set aside to cool.
  15. Mix together the icing sugar and just enough water to make a pourable but not runny icing. Transfer the icing to a piping bag with a small round nozzle and then pipe decoration over the cooled loaf. Serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies (Vegan)

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies (Vegan)

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With term almost over it’s time to head back to the land of stocked fridge and rolling fields. Whilst I’m looking forward to having a (bit) of a break, this has been the most amazing 8 weeks. From the people I’ve met to the things I’ve learnt, it’s been a total blast and I can’t wait to come back and so it all over again (after a long rest that is!). Some of the best times I’ve had this term have been our group baking sessions in our college kitchen. Trying to fit more people than can physically fit into a lil’ kitchen, jumping over people to get from the sink to the oven and then everyone eating whatever’s made in minutes.

Of course the down side of cooking at uni is the lack of equipment, ingredients and space. For example these were made with only half the ingredients we probably needed and when freezing the pinwheel log before cutting it into slices I had to wedge it into the jam-packed freezer, hence the slightly squashed shape. However, even with the set backs these turned out super tasty and were so fun to make, so I guess the main thing I’ve learnt from student cooking so far is just to make use of what you’ve got to hand and it’ll most likely turn out fine!

You can also play around with the two flavours in these as much as you like which is fun. I went for chocolate and peanut butter as they’re relatively cheap and taste hella good together. But you could try other combos like chocolate and vanilla, lemon and strawberry, or orange and almond. The key to get these looking good is to make sure that the two doughs have different enough colours to stand out against each other and to make sure you get a tight roll when you roll the wheels up. After that all you’ve got to worry about is getting them to the tin before everyone eats them.

Ingredients

For peanut butter dough

  • 125g Caster sugar
  • 113g Smooth peanut butter
  • A large pinch of Salt
  • 1 tbsp Water
  • 215g Plain flour

For the chocolate dough

  • 125g Caster sugar
  • 113g Smooth peanut butter
  • A large pinch of salt
  • 1 tbsp Water
  • 170g Plain flour
  • 45g Cocoa powder

Method

  1. First make the peanut dough. Put the peanut butter and sugar into a large bowl with the vanilla and a pinch of salt and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy.
  2. Add the water to the mixture and beat in to loosen the mixture a little. Then add the flour and mix everything together until a smooth dough forms.
  3. Use your hands to make the dough into a ball and then wrap it in cling film and leave it in the fridge until needed.
  4. Now make the chocolate dough. Repeat step 1 with the butter, sugar and so on.
  5. Add the water to the mix and beat to loosen the mixture as you did before. Then add the flour and the cocoa powder to the bowl and mix everything together until a smooth dough forms.
  6. Again, form the dough into a ball and wrap in clingfilm. Leave the two doughs in the fridge for 1-2 hours to harden up slightly.
  7. When ready take the peanut dough out of the fridge. Lay down a sheet of cling film on the work top and then place the dough on top. Lay out another sheet of cling film over the dough. Then take a rolling pin and roll the dough out into a oblong about 20cm x 40cm.
  8. Repeat with the chocolate dough so you have two rectangles of a similar shape.
  9. Take the top layer of the clingfilm off the two doughs. Then turn the chocolate dough over onto the peanut dough and take off the clingfilm sheet which will now be on the top.
  10. Carefully roll the sheet up into a pinwheel, working from short edge to short edge. It can help here to roll over a 1cm bit at the start to begin your spiral and then work from there.
  11. Wrap the log in clingfilm and then freeze for 1-2 hours to make it easier to cut later.
  12. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
  13. Take the pinwheel log out of the freezer and place it on a chopping board. Take a sharp knife and cut the log into 1cm discs. Place each cookie on the lined baking trays.
  14. Bake the biscuits for 15-20 minutes until slightly golden brown and crispy. Leave to cool before eating!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Coffee and Vanilla Zebra Cake

Coffee and Vanilla Zebra Cake

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I’m going Zebra themed this week!!! Wahey! Have I gone mad? No! Y’ see now that I’m officially an art student I was thinking about writing some artistic gumph on how zebras can be symbolic of who knows what and so on, but the truth is I’ve just made a zebra cake because I’ve wanted to make one of these for years and they look so cool. So here we go – zebra cakes 101. These are defined by their vertical stripes made by piping blobs of different coloured cake mix on top of each other to make a series of concentric rings (it’s essentially a fancy marble cake). Here I’ve gone for coffee and vanilla as they’re so good together and just sing out to comfort, but you can pair any two that have different colours (e.g chocolate and vanilla, raspberry and lemon, or chocolate and orange).

Now of course all good coffee cakes should be accompanied with walnuts, however with zebra cakes you want the mixture to be fairly smooth as you’ll be piping it. So to stop chunks of walnuts clogging up m’ nozzle I’ve added them to the filling so this has become a sort of coffee-walnut cake, but you can leave the walnuts out if you’d rather. The trick is also to just be patient. Half way through you’ll want to just go ‘what the heck’ and shove both mixes on top of each other and be done with it, but keep going and it’ll look fab!

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 90 minutes (including baking and cooling)

Ingredients

For the cake

  • 240g Caster sugar
  • 240g Butter
  • 4 Eggs
  • 250g Self raising flour
  • 2 tsp Baking powder
  • 1 tbsp Coffee powder
  • 1 tbsp Milk
  • ½ tsp Vanilla extract

For the icing/to decorate

  • 225g Icing sugar
  • 100g Butter
  • 1 ½ tbsp Coffee
  • 1 tbsp Milk
  • A handful of Walnuts, roughly chopped

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line two 18cm round tins with butter and baking paper.
  2. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until pale and creamy.
  3. Add the eggs one by one to the mixture, whisking in between each addition until combined. Add the flour and whisk again to make a smooth batter.
  4. Pour half the cake mixture (about 475g) into another bowl. Add the vanilla to this batch and then pour the mixture into a piping bag.
  5. Put the coffee and milk into a small bowl and stir until the coffee dissolves. Add the coffee to the other bowl of cake mixture and mix until combined. Pour the mixture into another piping bag.
  6. Pipe a blob of the vanilla mixture into the centre of each of your lined tins. Then pipe a blob of an equal size on top of the first blob. Repeat piping blobs on top of each other until all the mixture is used up.
  7. Move the tins around to make sure the mixture coats the whole of the tin (but don’t spread it around with a spatula as this will disrupt your layers!). Then bake the cakes in the oven for 15-20 minutes until risen and golden brown. A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean.
  8. Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and leave to cool before taking them out of the tins.
  9. Meanwhile move onto the icing. Put the icing sugar and butter into a bowl and beat together until smooth and creamy.
  10. Put the coffee and milk into another small bowl and stir until dissolved. Add the coffee mix to the buttercream and mix all together until smooth. Then spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle.
  11. Put one of your cakes onto your presentation plate. Then pipe blobs of the icing around the edge of the cake. Pipe icing into the middle so the cake is completely covered (you don’t have to do blobs for the middle bit, you could just pipe and then smooth it over with a knife). Scatter the chopped walnuts over the middle of the icing.
  12. Finally take your other cake and place it on top of the base with the best side facing up. Then pip a ring of icing around the edge on the top and serve!

Thanks for reading. If you try this please take a photo and send it to me, I love seeing people use my recipes! Have a great week!

Emma x

 
Blood Orange Chocolate Meringue Pie

Blood Orange Chocolate Meringue Pie

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Having just moved to a new place I’m meeting loads of new people and I’m going through that classic process of making friends. The classic what’s your name? Where are you from? What subject do you do? And so on.  Then once your past the go-to questions things get a little more creative, and sooner or later things seem to move onto ‘hobbies and interests’ at which point I inevitably get asked ‘what is your favourite thing to cook?’ It’s taken a while to work out what actually is my favourite thing to cook, and, whilst I don’t have a firm fave, the best answer I have at the moment is fruity meringue pies. This is somewhat ironic as I don’t really like them, but they’re fun to make for two reasons i) they’re my Grandad’s favourite so every time we see him I make a lemon meringue pie, and ii) they involve three really fun elements to make: pastry, curd and meringue.

I normally make traditional lemon meringue pies, but as I’m not a big fan of lemons I thought I’d try making a chocolate orange variation instead. However, the general concept of a meringue pie is that the curd is really sharp and that balances the super sweet meringue, so I’ve added some lemon juice in the curd of this one, not so much for the lemon flavour but more to give the filling a sharp kick. Since I made that almond and blood orange cake a little while ago I’ve been obsessed by blood oranges, and they work so well in this! They’re a little more floral and fruity than normal oranges, so you can think of this as orange-pie-plus!

(If you’ve never made pastry before and the thought of doing so makes you tremble, check out my last post on everything you need to know about making a pastry base!)

Recipe

Serves 12

Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

For the Pastry

  • 285g Plain flour
  • 30g Cocoa powder
  • 90g Icing sugar
  • Pinch of salt
  • 225g Unsalted butter
  • 1 Large egg
  • 1 tbsp Cold water

For the Blood orange curd

  • 3 Blood oranges
  • 3 tbsp Lemon juice
  • 65g Cornflour
  • 300ml Water
  • 110g Caster sugar
  • 85g Unsalted butter
  • 4 Egg yolks

For the meringue

  • 50g Dark chocolate
  • 5 Egg whites
  • 250g Caster sugar
  • 2 tsp Cocoa powder

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Then grease a 9 or 10 inch fluted tart tin.
  2. Put the flour, cocoa, sugar and salt into a large bowl and mix together. Add the butter and cut it up into chunks with a round bladed knife.
  3. Then go in with your fingers and rub the butter into the flour to make a bread-crumb texture.
  4. Add the egg yolk and the vanilla to the mixture and then mix everything together with a round bladed knife until a ball forms. (You might need to go in with your hands again and squish the dough into a ball).
  5. Wrap the dough in cling film and then leave it to chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
  6. Lightly flour a surface and turn the dough out onto it. Roll the pastry into a circle at least 12inch in diameter. Flip the pastry into the tart case and then gently ease it into the flutes of the tin. Then use a rolling pin to trim off the excess by rolling it over the edge. Chill in the fridge for another 30 minutes.
  7. Line the pastry case with baking paper and baking beans. The easiest way to do this is to scrunch up a square of baking paper and then un-crumple it – this will make it super easy to line the tin with!
  8. Put the base in the oven and bake for roughly 15 minutes, until the base is cooked through but not necessarily crisp. Then take the case out of the oven, remove the beans and bake for another 5-10 minutes, until crisp.
  9. Next make the curd. Put the zest and the juice of the blood oranges into a heatproof bowl. Add the lemon juice, cornflour and mix together to form a paste.
  10. Put the water into a pan and bring to the boil. Then pour the hot water over the orange mixture, stirring constantly. When combined pour the mixture back into the pan and place over a medium heat. Stir constantly until the mixture starts to thicken. Then leave to boil for a minute.
  11. Take the mixture off the heat and stir in the sugar, butter and the egg yolks. Set aside until needed.
  12. When the pastry case is ready, pour the curd into the case and smooth over with a spatula . Lower the oven temperature to 140˚C.
  13. Now make the meringue. Put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl over a pan over simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water!). Melt gently and then take the bowl off the heat and leave to cool a little.
  14. Next clean a metal or glass bowl and some electric beakers with hot soapy water. (You need them to be really clean so that the meringue will hold its shape).
  15. Put the egg whites into the clean, dry bowl and whisk until soft peaks form.
  16. Slowly add the sugar, one tbsp at a time, whisking constantly until stiff peaks form.
  17. Stir together the cocoa powder and the melted chocolate and fold it into the meringue to get a swirl effect.
  18. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle and then pipe swirls over the curd (or just dollop the meringue on top if you don’t want to pipe).
  19. Put the whole thing back in the oven for 10-15 minutes until it’s crisp but not brown. Then leave to cool slightly in the oven before serving!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

 
Making a Pastry Case

Making a Pastry Case

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Lots of people have been telling me that they love m’ blog but that everything looks too hard to actually make. Whist I’m perfectly happy to keep generating eye candy I thought I’d start some step-by-step posts on how to do relatively complicated but really useful things, like making a pastry case.

For years I couldn’t make these and I’d just buy the ready made ones from Sainsbury’s to avoid the disappointment of another soggy bottom or another crust that has shrunk, but alas years of practice has finally paid off and now these are one of my favourite things to make.

So here’s a step-by-step guide of how to make a pastry case, from making the pastry and lining the tin to baking blind and using your new found skill in actual recipes. Here I’m using a chocolate pastry as the recipe I’m posting next uses a chocolate crust, but feel free to use whatever flavour pastry you want.

How to make a pastry case

1. Make the pastry

This is a seemingly simple step but it is a very important one. How you make the pastry will vary between specific recipes but here’s a few top tips:

  • If the recipe says to rub the butter into the flour, begin this process by taking a table knife and cutting the butter up into the flour until it’s too small to keep cutting up. Then go in with your fingers. The warmer the pastry gets the softer it gets and the harder it is to work with, so you want to keep the pastry as cool as possible.
  • On a similar note, add your liquid to the dough gradually. If you add too much your dough will be super soft and hard to work with so you could end up over working the dough which would make the pastry undesirably chewy.
  • Finally make sure you chill the dough. Personally I’d chill it for at least 90 minutes, maybe more. This will help prevent the dough from shrinking and will also harden up any butter than may have melted during the making of the pastry, making it easier to work with.

2. Shape the dough

Take the dough out of the fridge and form into a ball. Sandwich the ball between two sheets of cling film and then squash slightly to make a flattened circle. Most people roll their pastry out onto a floured worktop but I find using cling film quicker, less messy and it saves on flour so why not?

3. Rolling out the pastry

Roll the pastry out between the cling film with large rolling pin into a large circle. Use the tin to see how much wider you need the dough to be and in what direction. The pastry should be about 2 cm wider all the way around (to be able to fit up the sides of the tin with some overhang), and be about the thickness of a 10p piece.

4. Putting the pastry into the tin

Now you’re going to have to get physical. Take the top layer of cling film off the pastry and discard it. Then ease the forearm of your less dominant hand under the pastry sheet and lift it up as shown above. (You could also do this with a rolling pin if you’d prefer). Then place the tin underneath where your arm is and roll the pastry off you arm and into the tin, making sure that the cling film is on top of the pastry. It’s a good idea to work from one side of the tin to the other, making sure there’s some good overhang.

5. Fit the pastry into the tin

Gently ease the pastry into the shape of the tin so that is has contact with the whole of the tin. This will help it to bake evenly. Then take the layer of cling film off the pastry.

6. Trim off the excess

Some people prefer to do this once the case has baked as it helps stop the pastry from shrinking away from the edges too much, but for tarts I think the best way to do it is like this. Make sure all your pastry is fitting snugly into the tin. Then take your rolling pin and roll it around the top of the tin so that the excess pastry is rolled off.

7. Using the excess pastry

Bundle up your excess pastry. You can use this to fill in any gaps in your base at this stage, or if any cracks appear after the first bake, so don’t throw it away! You could also use it to make pastry decorations, or even make cute little biscuits!

8. Blind baking

Blind baking is where you pre-bake the pastry case before adding the filling. This helps to make sure the base is cooked all the way through and stops you getting a soggy bottom! Some pies and tarts don’t need to be blind baked (pies with tops and bakewell tarts are two that come to mind) but it’s a useful skill to learn anyway.

Take a piece of baking paper wider than your tin and scrunch it into a ball like you were going to throw it away. Then un-crumple the paper and line the inside of the pastry case with it. Scrunching it up first should make it easier to make the pastry fit the shape, but still be careful when doing this as you could pull the pastry down from the sides of the tin.

9. Adding the beans

If you bake the pastry case without any filling or weight on it then the base will rise up and leave no room for any fillings. To stop this you can use ceramic beans like these which are re-usable and weigh the pastry down. Alternatively you could use rice, lentils or any other dried pulse to weigh the pastry down, but I prefer using beans as then I don’t feel like I’m wasting food.

Bake the pastry in the oven for 15-20 minutes. This will vary depending on the size and type of tart you’re making but you generally want the pastry to look cooked all the way through (see photo below), even if it’s not crispy yet.

10. Second bake

Once the pastry has cooked all the way through, take it out of the oven and take the beans or whatever’s weighing the pastry down out. Also take out and discard the baking paper. Then bake the pastry for a further 5-10 minutes until crispy but not burnt.

11. Be creative!

Hopefully you should have a perfect crisp pastry case to work with now. You can either stop the baking here and fill the case with things that need to be chilled to set, or you could fill it with mixtures and fillings that need to be baked. Here’s a few of my faves to try…

 

Baked fillings

Frangipane – This is a cake-type mixture made with almonds. It’s traditionally used for bakewell tarts but it’s also a great base for other types of baked tarts!

Custard – Whilst some custard fillings will just set naturally, some need to be baked, like Portuguese custard tarts. You can really experiment with this type of filling as the custard can be flavoured and customised a lot.

Fruit – Mainly for pies, but also for tarts. Peel and de-stone whatever fruit you like and then either stew it first or pop it into a pastry case raw.

Cold fillings

Jams – This works really well in the bottom of a tart with a baked frangipane or a light mousse over the top as it packs great flavour!

Ganache – The first tarts I made were just chocolate tarts made by pouring warm cream over an equal amount of chopped dark chocolate and leaving it to set. You can also add liqueurs to your ganache if you want to make a boozy tart.

Mousse – It’s slightly untraditional to put mousse in a tart,  but I think a soft fruit mousse can work really well in a pastry case, especially if layered with a jam or jelly.

Creme pattisserie – On the other side of our baked custard tarts are the tarts filled with creme patisserie – a custard that doesn’t need to be baked. This is really good when topped with fresh fruit and berries! (See recipe below).

Recipe suggestions…

Vegan Woodland Pie

Devils Fruit Pie

Bakewell Tartlets

Butterscotch Pear Tart with Blackberry Sauce

Fruit Tartlets

Thanks for reading! If you have any other pastry queries I haven’t talked about here please let me know by leaving a comment below.

Emma x